[Author's Preface] My journey along the pleasant paths and byways of Shaker Village began one summer afternoon in 1966 in an appropriately simple manner, without any hint of what I would find.

[A Word About the Photographs] During the American Food Festival on Shaker cooking at the Vista International Hotel in New York City, I first met Sister Frances A. Carr, the kitchen deaconess of the Sabbathday Lake Community.

From a vantage point high on a gently sloping hill, standing amid rows of apple trees, you can see much of the Shaker Village and, beyond it, the lake from which it takes its name.

[Other Seasons, Other Years: An Afterword] Near the end of the nineteenth century Sister Aurelia Mace recorded her observations about the state of the community.